Morning Bites: Updating DFW, Robber Barons, Zadie’s First Lines, Frank Ocean and More

Journalistically speaking, there is no hot news to offer you about Roger Federer. He is, at 25 30, the best tennis player currently alive. – Updating David Foster Wallace’s “Federer as Religious Experience.” Originally published in 2006. The Millions have the first lines of Zadie Smith’s NW. Updike’s Bech stories reviewed at The New Republic. America’s first female robber barron. The New York Times profiles Frank Ocean. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, Google + and our Tumblr.

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Bites: Dickens as the modern dad, Ivy Pochoda to make publishing history, Tao Lin saves, and more

Lit. Could Dickens be a role model for the parents of today, or was it that he just had O.C.D.? Ivy Pochoda is the featured reader at our upcoming Vol. 1 Brooklyn Storytelling series.  With her new book The Art of Disappearing (St. Martins Press) out tomorrow, which coincidentally is the same day that Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol hits stands, Ivy says that together, the two of them combined will make publishing history.    This points to a good sign […]

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Bites: Frank Portman’s playlist, Roger’s monograms, Michael Pollan, indie bookselling as football, and (maybe) one last mention of Inherent Vice .

Frank Portman, of one of my favorite pop-punk bands, Mr. T Experience, has a new book out called Andromeda Klein, and he gives Largehearted Boy a great playlist for Book Notes. N+1: Not so into zombies/alien films, but likes District 9. Indichik put up an MP3 of Beach Fossils last week.  I forgot to mention it, but it’s well worth mentioning considering this guy is putting out some of the best stuff I’ve heard all year. New York Times Book […]

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Bites: Frank Portman’s playlist, Roger’s monograms, Michael Pollan, indie bookselling as football, and (maybe) one last mention of Inherent Vice

Frank Portman, of one of my favorite pop-punk bands, Mr. T Experience, has a new book out called Andromeda Klein.  He gives Largehearted Boy a great playlist for Book Notes. N+1: Not so into zombies/alien films, but likes District 9. Indichik put up an MP3 of Beach Fossils last week.  I forgot to mention it, but it’s well worth mentioning considering this guy is putting out some of the best stuff I’ve heard all year. New York Times Book Review […]

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Death in Tennis by John Stephens

If such things can be declared (they can, though needn’t be agreed upon), I declare John Updike’s 1960 New Yorker essay on Ted Williams last at bat to be the most illuminative moment in the history of sports journalism. The mind of the reader cannot help but being left imprinted by the light of such images as the Kid standing on third base like Donatello’s David, and that of rounding the bases, after exploding the crowd with his last-at-bat home […]

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